Snake-wrangling YouTuber hunts down 60 invasive pythons for Florida competition

Miami Herald

a day ago

On an island in the middle of the Florida Everglades, Taylor Stanberry — mostly nocturnal in the summer catching Burmese pythons — uncovered a wriggling nest of 30 baby pythons.
The discovery helped the Naples resident land first place in the 2025 Florida Python Challenge, which drew 934 hunters competing to make a dent in the state's invasive Burmese python population, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced Aug. 13.
'I've been catching pythons for 11 years, so it kind of gets to be just like another day in the office,' Stanberry told McClatchy News on Aug. 15. 'But it is always fun actually finding fresh babies along with the eggs, because that is such a hard thing to do.'
The competitors estimated that the timing of this year's contest, which ran July 11 to 20, and the discovery of the nests helped bolster the removal numbers. Last year, the first place winner caught 20 pythons during the contest, which was held nearly a month later than this year's, McClatchy News reported last September.
This year's competitors hauled in a record 294 snakes, with 40% of those coming from two women alone.
Stanberry is one and Donna Kalil is the other, winning the most pythons prize in the professional category with 56 snakes, beating her 19 pythons from last year.
'Being the first female ultimate grand prize winner is a huge honor, because I know the other women that competed are awesome, like Donna won first place in a professional category,' Stanberry said.
Stanberry and her husband have a large following on YouTube and social media, where they showcase their encounters with wildlife in Florida and around the world, mostly focusing on snakes. They also run a wildlife sanctuary with over 150 venomous snakes, and relocate venomous snakes in southwest Florida, Stanberry said.
'Me and my husband especially, we try to work really hard on saving wildlife and educating people on wildlife. So finally getting some recognition on the hard work that we've been doing means a lot,' said Stanberry, who took home a $10,000 prize for first place.
Stanberry and her husband make educational videos about snakes to help reduce the creatures' bad reputation. Their YouTube channel has nearly 230,000 subscribers.
In one YouTube video, Stanberry holds a venomous coral snake, explaining the differences between the species and other similar-looking snakes. In another video, she pulls a rattlesnake out of a pool with a snake hook.
'So it's really about just educating people that snakes really aren't bad,' she said. 'That's one thing I hate about the hunting of the pythons, in a sense, that everyone's just like, 'yeah, kill the snakes.' I'm like, 'No, it's not about killing snakes. It's about saving the other snakes.''
Burmese pythons, one of the largest snake species in the world, currently run unchecked in the Everglades with few natural predators, FWC biologists say.
Pythons aren't picky about what they eat either, feasting on 'mammals, birds, reptiles and protected species such as the federally designated threatened wood stork and the federally-designated endangered Key Largo woodrat,' according to the FWC. 'Burmese pythons can consume meals equivalent to 100% their body mass.'
Stanberry's desire to help native wildlife drives her to even become partly nocturnal during the summer months, when python hunting is only possible at night.
Stanberry and her husband, and sometimes friends who like to come along, will brave the heat and bugs and hike out into the swamp, drive out to trails in a vehicle, take electric bikes or motor around in a johnboat looking for the invasive species.
When Stanberry goes out looking for pythons, she said she also enjoys seeing other native wildlife like alligators, owls and snakes.
'So then that really motivates you, especially when you're in a rural area and you see bobcats and you know, they're the perfect python meal size,' she said. 'So it's like, OK, we gotta capture the pythons so we can continue to see all of this wildlife.'
Other winners of this year's tournament include Michael Marousky, who took home the longest python prize with a 15-foot, 11-inch catch. Others caught pythons measuring 9 feet and 11 feet.
'I just want people to hunt pythons for the right reason,' Stanberry said. 'Don't do it just because it's fun to catch a big snake and kill it, you know, because that's not why I do it. It's really just about saving native wildlife and helping lower the python population.'